RPGs, Autism and Poetry: Poems of a Player's Experience
by winowa-san
Summary: RPG games such as D&D, Pathfinder and now Starfinder can lead to some pretty wild and wacky adventures. I have as both a player and DM/GM experienced plenty of mishaps, awesome circumstances of chance, as well as the fair share of occasional player nonsense. These are some of what I consider to be the most memorable moments that have occurred; now in poetic verse.
1. Foreword by the Author

**Foreword by the author**

Greetings readers,

I know what you're thinking: poems about role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder? As odd as it may seem this is exactly what the poems contained within this book are about. So why write poems about games? Truth be told it all comes down to experience. Preserving a feeling, a memory, not just in mind but on paper, immortalized. Poems, like memories can be vehicles for emotion, preserving not just the physical moments, but also sometimes the emotional significance of that event as well.

I am a rather avid player in both of the two games. I started with playing D&D in Adventurer's League and even acted as a back-up GM for a season or two. Despite the purpose of the group most of the people I played with were regulars that returned season after season. During my time playing and GMing many little quirky situations would stick in my mind, either due to how awesome, goofy or awkward that particular event was. One particular season, Curse of Strahd, which began at Adventurer's league then continued later as a home game, became a particularly memorable season that started out relatively sane but soon proved to be a bit of a mad-house of a campaign.

Then on an invite from a relative, I joined his homebrew Pathfinder campaign. While I joined this campaign halfway through, I enjoyed myself immensely. I would later join both sequels to this first campaign and a third that was run by one of the other players from them. These campaigns would too leave memorable moments in my memory that, much like my D&D experiences, would fuel the creative processes that would result in the poems in this book.

Now while I will admit that most of these poems are about and were inspired by events that occurred while I was playing, there are also a few poems that are not. I did also to attempt to run a homebrew, but unfortunately it seems as if I don't have as much talent for GMing homebrews that as I do for writing poetry or creating an enticing setting and races. So while most of these poems reflect events of the games I have played there are also a few from the setting of that failed campaign included as well.

There are also yet more poems from neither experienced events nor the failed homebrew. These poems nonetheless are inspired by the spirit of the tabletop RPG experience as a whole. These poems are as a result a bit more generic than those poems inspired by events or the failed campaign.

Whether from fun memories as a player or a failed homebrew campaign, playing these two RPGs has provided me with some of the more entertaining moments of my life. And it is because of thus that I hereby dedicate the poems contained within this volume to all the players I played with and who inspired these poems that I am hereby publishing all to enjoy.


	2. Gaming Night

I would not post this as a fanfic if I owned the rights to any tabletop RPG. Better known as i dont own D&D, Pathfinder or Starfinder.

 **Gaming Night**

My heart thrums as I roll the dice

My sword strikes home

Spells fly from my ally's hand

This dragon is almost done

Oh wait, oh no

It is now the dragon's turn

The wizard, now ash

The ranger falls with a crash

The bard thrashes in pain

The cleric is in the red

My character is almost dead

But barely have we clung on

The cleric casts mass heal

The bard sings with renewed zeal

My character swings once more

The dragon is beheaded

In its neck my sword, embedded

Treasure looted,

Dead raised

No member excluded

The wizard returns

The ranger stands

Thus the dungeon is concluded


	3. Improvised Fire Elemental

I do not own D&D, Wizards of the Coast does. If i owned it do you think i would be publishing this here

 **Improvised Flame Elemental**

A form of air appears

A large whirlwind form

The gnome has oil

She tosses it, by miracle a hit

The ifrit tosses a flame

The oil burns

The elemental turns

The gnome is now a briquette

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thank you to my group for D&D 5e, Adventurer's League, Elemental Evil campaign for this gem. I still remember the Gnome rogue getting mulched by the elemental after the Fire Genasi [Ifrit] rogue set it on fire.


	4. This Party is Insane

_I do not own D &D, only the insane experience I had playing it._

 **This Party is Insane**

They started out good, my party was moral

But that all turned down hill

My character least moral, now referee

How did this go so wrong?

First dungeon so long cleared

The sorcerer had barely showed

A sacrifice required

My character struck first

The ranger joined in

Her morality becoming tainted

The bard loses himself to fear

A curse he obtains

Fire he now fears

The sanity of the fighter was questionable

This apparent right from the start

He drinks, he offends

Through any lock he smashes

Despite the rogue's presence

The rogue is an imp

She pranks the fighter

He trips often

She accidentally killed the gravedigger

Invisible, I flee the summoned lynch mob

Thankfully the digger's death, redacted

My character, necromancer and healer

Wishes to remove annoying companion

The companion almost invisible, almost unheard

The necromancer sees the spectre, others cannot

The spectre annoying, yet useful

The necromancer watches the deterioration

Watches his companions go insane

At least those not already so

They attempt to go too far

The necromancer acts as voice of reason

As his companions fall to madness

 **Thank you to my group for D &D 5e, Adventurer's League, Curse of Strahd campaign for this gem. **

**My character for this season was a necromancer wizard multi-classed with an arcane priest; he was supposed to be the one with the loosest morals, but that quickly turned on its head. Aside from my character and the rogue, most of the party started out being either Neutral Good or Chaotic Good. By the end of it almost everyone in the party was Chaotic Neutral. Thankfully the GM redacted the rogue's accidental killing the gravedigger.**

 **I am actually going to be posting quite a few incidents from that season as many memorable events occurred during the party's descent into madness and bedlam.**


	5. Smashy the Dwarf

_I do not own D &D_

 **Smashy the Dwarf**

He sneaks in the night, this Dwarven fighter

Towards his chosen pray

A corrupt guard stands

The Dwarf attacks from behind

The guard falls uncurious

His armor stolen

New dawn, new laws

A plague of unjust duels

To an official the party goes

The dwarf decides to demonstrate

He challenges a bodyguard

The dwarf swings his hammer

SMASH!

The bodyguard flies

Into a wall the bodyguard crashes

Body unrecognisable

Bloody pulp falls to the floor

The duels stop

The point made

Hail the chronicle of Smashy the Dwarf

The one hit kill wonder

 **Thank you to my group for D &D Next, Adventurer's League, Murder in Balder's Gate campaign for this gem.**

 **No Smashy was not this actual character name, it is more like how I remember this character. Yes he knocked a corrupt guard out and stole his armor, and he did also kill a noble in a duel (although that duel was less about proving the party's point and more about how 'Smashy' just wanted to take advantage of the law to scruff up a few nobles before that law was repealed)**


	6. Animal Bribes

I do not own D&D, Pathfinder or Starfinder.

 **Animal Bribes**

Animal friendship, no need

Speak with animals is the only creed

Need to search in frigate freight

Bribe the rats to search the crate

Rude noble draw your wrath

Rats can scare them off the path

Scout for danger big and small

Birds and squirrels can search it all

Very useful is this spell

If your druid does it well

 **A favorite trick of mine is to bribe whatever animals are around into doing things for me. whether bribing Squirrels, rats and Birds to scout crates and enemy bases, bribing rats to scare Jerk-hole nobles out of inns, or wolves to aid in raiding an enemy camp; believe me this is a trick that really doesn't get old.**


	7. Don't Wake the Orc

I do not own D&D

 **Don't Wake the Orc**

My party did at one point contain

An orc that was a real pain

One night he went to sleep

And at that moment did danger creep

From the sky they attacked

And yet the orc refused to act

He slept on as allies died

Till one moment the Druid screamed wide

He threw a rock

At an ally most shocked

And yelled "let me sleep"

The druid fell down

Kayoed from the blow to his crown

The party thus learned

Never wake this sleeping Orc

 **Thank you to my group for D &D 5e, Adventurer's League, Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign for this gem.**

 **Yes my character, the Druid attempted to wake up his Orc companion and was knocked out as a result. The party was being attacked by Quasits at night while camping outside a cave, and when we tried to rouse the orc for help we ended up being hit by friendly fire in the form of having small rocks thrown at us by our orc companion. this orc literally spent his turn throwing a rock at the person who woke him up (my charater, the druid) and then immidiatly went back to sleep without aiding the rest of the party any further.**

 **Yet you would be surprised to know that this wasn't the last time the party tried to rouse this orc from slumber. the second time my character turned into a giant snake and ended up being squeezed in the orc's grip like a giant teddy bear**

 **The third time we convinced a new party member (a bard if i recall) to try waking the orc instead. It ended about as well as my first attempt immortalized in the poem above. After the third attempt we just decided that the orc should just be left asleep to use as bait**


End file.
